What do you give a congressman for his birthday? If you're Senate candidate Rand Paul and you're choosing presents for dad, Rep. Ron Paul, whose birthday was yesterday, you go for gifts that scream politics. "I gave him an original copy of Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative that was given to me by the publisher," Rand Paul tells Whispers, adding that it was published in Kentucky, where he's running for U.S. Senate. He also gave his pop, who's a big fan of economics, some early 20th-century currency called gold certificates. "So I gave him that, framed, with a statement at the bottom that says, 'When paper was as good as gold,' " he says.

Though that's nice, what Ron gave back to his son was better; he let Rand use his birth date as a fundraiser. "His birthday present to me, I guess, was helping with the 'money bomb,' " says Rand Paul. His campaign scheduled a money bomba mass online donation for Ron's birthday and, within 24 hours, added $430,000 to its coffers. While the underdog candidate has now raised over $680,000, the original goal for yesterday's money bomb was $1 million. Rand tells us he's not disappointed. "I think you set high goals in order to try to motivate people to go for things," he says. "When my dad raised $6 million online [during his presidential campaign], nobody remembers that his goal was $10 million."

He got military spending back up to where it should have been. That may "grow government" but it has always been a plus in the conservative playbook. He destroyed the soviets by credibly threatening to complete High Frontier aka Star Wars. That is a plus.

Ronaldus Maximus certainly did not start any policy of deficit spending. He may not have overcome it as established by his predecessors. From 1950 to 1994, I believe there were only three "balanced budgets." Eisenhower (a Rino) accomplished two of them. Nixon (not a conservative paragon) the other. In each case, there was a mild appreciation and twittering among the Main Street coupon clipper set. Then the Main Street etc. could say in the next election campaign: WOW!!!!! We balanced the budget. The public responds with a looooong yawn. The Demonrats would respond with: Elect us and we'll give ya lotsa free stuff and make them rich guys pay for it. This ritually elicits a standing ovation from the otherwise bored crowd. The Demons play Santa Claus, the GOP plays the grinch who stole Christmas and, surprise! The Demons win.

Can we EVER break out of this cycle of being useless and brainless pinchpennies devoid of imagination, and whose image is American Gothic?

The conservative movement is about things far more important than mere money. AND THEN some want a revival of Neville Chamberlainism as foreign policy????

22
posted on 08/25/2009 7:27:40 AM PDT
by BlackElk
(Dean of Discipline of the Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Club)

that’s the difference, you think big government is ok as long as its spending on military adventures, the other side want big spending on health care and such. eventually they compromise, it’s all the same, different sides of the same coin. big spending is big spending whether its military or domestic and the United States cannot afford it.

This is why Ron Paul became disillusioned with Reagan because he campaigned as a true conservative but when he got into office goverened differently. he certainly grew all facets of government and left it bigger than it was before like most Presidents!

Money is only money and is the obsession of small minds. What libertoonians don't get is that far more important issues engage most folks. I would gladly reduce the welfare state.

Some people complain that we are not building an Iron Curtain between Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California OTOH and Mexico on the other and arming the border with every available military unit. Scrap the war against those who took down the WTC and attacked the Pentagon and hijacked four passenger airliners to do it, they say! Keep those Mexicans from coming north to lounge kn luxury on the welfare state of the USA. Now there are several ways to address the perceived problem. It seems likely that the most genuinely libertarian plan would be to end the welfare state. Conservatives can agree with that. No magic wand dumping every recipient into the gutters tomorrow morning at 3 AM but a measurable distance from today to the end of Medicaid, HUD, the Education Department, gummint edjumakashun generally, the Energy Department, the Labor Department, the Commerce Department (tolerated by that infamous neocon Calvin Coolidge/just ribbing), the new funding of nearly a measly $1 million to study the effect of the use of "recreational" drugs in enhancing adolescent sexual experiences (one waits in vain for libertarian complaints on the "constitutionality" of that one), Consumer Product Safety Commission, Food and Drug Administration, ICC, FCC, the federal tea-tasting board, the federal mohair commission and a zillion other wasteful boondoggles. If that list is not comprehensive enough, add your favorite ten federal boondoggles. Perhaps, you might start with federal earmarks for shrimping subsidies for Galveston area shrimp magnates.

Obliterating our enemies takes precedence over abolishing the tea-tasting board. Crushing Islamofascism, like ending communism takes precedence over eliminating the mohair commission. Taking out the people who have perpetrated the Achille Lauro, the Munich Olympics murders, blown up buses full of Israeli school children, have raised suicide/homicide bombing to an art form and have harmed and killed thousands of young American patriots who have been dispatched to punish them, will have to take precedence over eliminating various unconstitutional cabinet departments and programs. FIRST THINGS FIRST. Other things that take precedence over libertoonian dreamerama include protecting the lives of unborn babies whether paleoPaulie thinks that constitutional or not, and likewise protecting marriage from perversions posing as same.

Whatever you may think, there is certainly a distinction of major note in the conservative mind between maintaining a military that precludes attacks on our nation by its overwhelming capacity to destroy all enemies and expanding health care or creating federal womb-to-shoe box veterinary care for Spot and Tabby the Wonder Cat. However, it is libertoonians who want to ignore that distinction and cut all spending so that they will not be taxed and can have a permanent party on the spoils of their portfolios. The nation be darned, they just gotta be them! If babies have to die, so be it, they say! If marriage is to be mocked, who cares? If you weren't in the WTC on 9/11, why should you care? What you call "big spending" on military is a tiny percentage of the fedbudget. The fatal flaw in libertarianism as practiced today is that it dies not care about ANYTHING or ANYONE (other than the imperial self) enough to wage war or punish miscreants. You worship your wallets above all and most conservative folks regard your wallets as verrrry strange gods indeed.

It is not that your domestic budgetary concerns are wrong but rather that they lack weight to command the attention of serious people. Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Midge Decter, and Norman Podhoretz are far more reliable and far more valuable allies on their worst days than libertarians tend to be on their best days. That is why you don't count as any important part of the conservative movement. As a movement, you posit and defend the notion of a Godless society based on false pseudo-moral equivalence between belief and non-belief. That is why you don't count as an any important part of the conservative movement.

Ron Paul became disillusioned as he proceeded into ever more incoherent political insanity while Ronaldus Maximus governed as generally his voters expected him to govern. The fact that the abacuses of the paleos were overworked calculating federal budgets notwithstanding, Reagan is the gold standard for conservatism in the White House. If you doubt that, then take your hands off our lapels and run the paleotreasonweasel on the Libertoonian Party where he belongs and we will crush him there. Run him in the GOP and we will crush the 76-year old Captain Ludicrous worse than he was crushed last year. The party will not be hijacked and destroyed by the straitjacketed set of paleos.

At least, I will give you credit for being honest about Ronaldus Maximus and not pretending that he would be a paleo today. He did not credential many paleos during his eight years and they finally figured out that they were regarded as embarrassingly eccentric looney tunes and would NOT be credentialed or regarded as ready for prime time. They exploded in rage over this imagined mistreatment in 1986 at a meeting of the Mont Pelerin or Philadelphia Society and have been lurking under rocks ever since.

24
posted on 08/25/2009 10:32:43 AM PDT
by BlackElk
(Dean of Discipline of the Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Club)

Reagan also campaigned for Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., to be elected to Congress in 1968 but conservatives don't hold that against Ronaldus Maximus either. The man was POTUS not pope and made a mistake every decade or two.

Like Weicker, paleoPaulie went fully nuts well after he was supported by Ronaldus Maximus and in spite of that former support. Reagan's support was always politically useful but it was not an inoculation against political insanity as is amply demonstrated by the Galveston treasonweasel and all purpose Al Qaeda mouthpiece in America and peacecreep paleoPaulie.

You are probably helping most FReepers unite, however, in opposition to Mohammed "Earmarks" Paulie, the shrimpin' magnates' pal in DC. JimRob had Paulie's number last year. You missed the memo.

27
posted on 08/27/2009 9:05:16 AM PDT
by BlackElk
(Dean of Discipline of the Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Club)

Paul is exactly what Reagan stood for and believed in but didn’t govern as. Instead Reagan was sat down by the joint chiefs and the banksters like every new president and told what the deal was or he ends up like JFK. That is why you have so many sell out presidents who sound very reasonable. Remember Bush’s “humble foreign policy” and “no nationa building” (search youtube for the George Bush you forgot) that is exactly what Ron Paul stands for!!! Ron is consistant and principled and cannot be bought off though I suspect if he ever reached president, he would be bumped off by the criminal gang in DC

No doubt Ronaldus Maximus passed this inside story along to you when last you channeled him. Puhleeze. No one would try to buy off the Galveston Treasonweasel. There is no danger than he will ever have power. Back to the Bircher drawing board! Paulie is consistent and principled???? Laugh, I thought I’d die.

32
posted on 08/27/2009 5:08:10 PM PDT
by BlackElk
(Dean of Discipline of the Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Club)

Mr Elk, please just buy a copy of Ron Paul’s Manifesto, 10 bucks or less at Amazon and you can learn about his beliefs, he is NOT a treasonsnake.

here is an excerpt:

‘In the days before Medicare and Medicaid, the poor and elderly were admitted to hospitals at the same rate they are now, and received good care. Before those programs came into existence, every physician understood that he or she had a responsibility towards the less fortunate and free medical care was the norm. Hardly anyone is aware of this today, since it doesn’t fit into the typical, by the script story of government rescuing us from a predatory private sector. ‘[From The Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul]

PaleoPaulie proved himself beyond argument to be an antiAmerican treasonweasel in the 2008 primary debates. He proved his lack of judgment by associating with David Duke. He is a proven anachronistic moron as proven by his actual 21st century advocacy of issuance of letters marque and reprisal in lieu of a manly foreign policy marked by the military crushing of the enemies of our nation and of our civilization. He is an treasonous imbecile in time of war as proven by his "Blame America First" blather shared with the American left and Islamofascist buttsmoochers everywhere. You want to ignore his two-faced dishonesty on abortion and earmarking, for two examples. Etc., etc., ad infinitum ad nauseam.

Worse yet, you want me to waste money and, more importantly, time on reading the uberloon's writings. Paulie's problems do not stem from underexposure, but rather from overexposure. I ignored him for decades until he just had to INSIST on polluting the GOP POTUS primary process in 2008.

Much better to spend one's money and time on Scripture, Benedict XVI, John Paul II, Pope St. Pius X, Ludwig von Mises (the actual one and not the parody perpetrated by another treasonweasel Llewellyn Rockwell), Friedrich von Hayek, Hillaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, or popular fiction like Clavell's Shogun, James Michener's anything (even if he was a left-winger) a lot of recent Michael Crichton such as the anti-global warming hysteria State of Fear.

Anything fiction or non-fiction by the late Fr. Malachi Martin.

Try Lynne Cheney's Telling the Truth (probably the best and most insightful book I have read in the last decade-out of many hundreds read).

Anything by Marcus Tullius Cicero. Try the Aeneid (if you are not fluent in Latin, try Robert Fitzgerald's magnificent translation and he also translated the liad and the Odyssey).

Try histories of the Apaches: Once They Moved Like the Wind or the novel Avenging Victorio. Try biographies of Ronald Reagan. Try Peggy Noonan (in her previous militantly American incarnation) in What I Saw at the Revolution. Learn imperfectly about the actual conservative movement as it was and not as Paulie hallucinates that it was: Cadres for Conservatism.

Try Paul Johnson's Modern Times or just about anything else by him, Michael Novak's almost anything, Stonewall Jackson or anything else by by James I. Robbins; Herodotus, Livy, Fulton Sheen, George Weigel, and even the early novels by la Rand: Anthem and We the Living.

Entertainment is available in the novels of early Tom Clancy, Patricia Cornwell, David Baldacci, John Grisham, Taylor Caldwell (Captains and Kings), John Saul, Jeffrey Deaver and many others. Also, the historical novels of the Shaara family including Gods and Generals, Gettysburg, Last Full Measure and the one about the Mexican War (Gone for Soldiers?) which served as spring training for the War of the Imposition of Northern Tyranny (1861-1865).

Finally, spending time (especially if you are not a New York Yankee fan and therefore in need of instruction), on the library of Yankee literature including Peter Golenbeck's Dynasty: The New York Yankees from 1949-1964; When Rooting for the New York Yankees Was Like Rooting for US Steel, is never wasted.

With such riches of reading available and as the remaining years grow fewer, why would I even consider spending money or time on Ron Paul's anything? I'd far rather be FReeping or reading worthwhile stuff like those listed above.

Two deficiencies at FR compared to the otherwise inferior Lucianne.com are the absence of threads encouraging the swapping of reading lists and of recipes (typically family recipes at holiday time) both of which facilitate getting to know one another without the need for verbal combat dominating the entire learning process.

I am pinging JimRob to convey that suggestion. Recipes and reading lists will perpetually cement FR as best site on the web bar none and permanently beyond challenge.

35
posted on 08/28/2009 11:25:43 AM PDT
by BlackElk
(Dean of Discipline of the Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Club)

thank you for your reading list BlackElk, interesting to see Hayek and Von Mises on there showing that you appreciate real economics and not the phoney baloney from Dodd, Bernanke and the rest of the crooks in DC. I was sad to see you protest Lew Rockwell who I think is an excellent writer and his website is a must read. You claim he is a treason yet his institute does so much to promote the classical economic works of Mises, Hayek and Murray N. Rothbard.

Rockwell is just another paleopeacecreep who dishonors the name of Ludwig von Mises by misappropriating it for his purposes. Treason is not defined by one’s economic views but by one’s resistance to one’s country in time of war. Justin(e) Raimondo, the lavender queen of antiwar.com may claim to be a free marketeer, a libertarian, etc. That does not excuse his limpwristedness’s opposition to America at war.

37
posted on 08/29/2009 1:19:59 AM PDT
by BlackElk
(Dean of Discipline of the Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Club)

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